I consider myself pretty Americanized despite my very Japanese upbringing.  I went to preschool, kinder, elementary, junior high and 3 years of high school in Irvine, California.  I only spent my Junior year of high school in Japan where I attended an International School for a year.  I am proud of my heritage and learned a lot about my parent’s home-country growing up.  I endured 6 years of Saturday Japanese school (Asahi Gakkuen) and came out speaking the language fluently.  I guess despite it all, I lead a pretty charmed childhood but the one thing I did not like was when my mom packed my lunch.

I brought a bento box to school almost every day in elementary school before bento boxes were a thing.  I hated it.  When I was growing up, Irvine was pretty homogenous. Of course there were Asian children, and a sprinkling of kids of other or mixed races, but I don’t think there were other Japanese students in my grade?  If there were, I was not friends with them so I don’t remember.   I fit in just fine and had lots of friends, but when it came to my special lunches, I felt like an alien and kind of ashamed.

My lunch never came in a brown paper sack or a tin lunch box.  My mom tied my lunch and snacks up, FUROSHIKI style.  You know, because that’s what she knew, so that’s what she did.  And mind you, my lunches were perfect.  Always nutrition packed and so excruciatingly Japanese.  Rice was the staple.  They never looked like this,

but all I wanted was a normal lunch.  A PB&J and an apple, or a damn lunchable please! Why couldn’t my mom wrap her head around this one request?  It would have taken less time to prepare!  And I would have felt normal.

Flash forward to today.  My older son completed 3 years of Japanese Immersion preschool, then went on to kindergarten and is now in 1st grade at the school up the street. My younger son is still in Japanese Immersion preschool.  I pack their lunches everyday except for when the older one wants to buy lunch on Pizza Friday.  And guess what? Their lunches eerily look a lot like the dreaded ones I used to take to elementary school myself… those bento lunches that I hated so much.  The difference with my kids is, they don’t complain or seem to care what their lunches look like.  They actually kind of love them and every morning they ask to see the contents of their bento boxes before they go into their lunch bags…  Hmmmm…  Was I just over-sensitive as a child?  Will R and R start asking for PB&J one day or will they continue to happily eat what I make them?  It’s like a mini social experiment and I’m curious to see how it pans out over the years.

On any given night, if you ask my children what they want for dinner, the answer is always the same.  Rice.  They could eat a rice based meal 3x’s a day if I prepared it that way.  Since my husband is an American of German-Sicilian descent, we do eat pasta and other types of American dinners (think mac-n’-cheese and chicken nuggets) but honestly, the kidlettes are full-on Japanese when it comes to their food habits and tastes.  It’s not chips, it’s rice crackers.  It’s not soda, it’s YAKURUTO, CALPICO or RAMUNÉ.  And get this, they don’t like Mexican food!  WHAT?!?!?  I adore Mexican food!!!  Sushi is a treat, but we eat more sushi than any family with young children that I know.  And I’m not talking about California rolls.  My kids love IKURA and Fatty Salmon nigiri style.  🙁 $$$$  How did this happen?  It’s not because I’m a good cook.  My cooking prowess is mediocre at best.  But I can make my dearly departed mom’s meals because that’s what I know and that’s what I grew up with.

In Jr. High, I used to eat mint flavored ice cream sandwiches and a Cactus Cooler with Funyuns for lunch because by that time, I paid for my lunch every day at school and I decided what I wanted to eat.  Good Lord!  If my mother only knew what kind of disgusting crap I ate when she was not looking in those days!!!  She’s probably rolling in her grave!  High School?  The Taco Bell down the street was a regular. I must have consumed over a thousand bean and cheese burritos with fries and a coke. Barf.  All that shitty food makes me cringe now and all I want is a bowl of rice with pickled cucumbers and some baked fish.

So, off to school my kids go.  Swinging their lunch bags with Bento Boxes in them. Today’s menu: rice balls and three or four “sides” all snuggled into their divided sections…  When will the plea for the PB&J come?  We shall see…

-K